There are a lot of "pretenders" here and as well as other social media places.
Even here many have been exposed over the years and they were either banned or they left.
So in this day and age any younger person (teen) should always be cautious.
That's for sure.
I'm just encouraging the young man to stick around if he wants to talk to others his age group.
In the meantime he can say hello and participate in appropriate public discussions. Home schoolers typically do so well in the area they are wrongly accused of failure.... socialization. They usually are better at appropriate interaction with others if all ages .
The home schoolers are not isolated from interaction with responsible adults, like their parents and others their parents approve of engaging in conversation like teachers.
I'd like to see teen groups visit nursing homes with their parents.
It's rare for them to interact with actual family members enough to develope proper community.
Government schools practice age segregation. It forces them to interact with many who behave immature and irresponsible. Then parents want the teachers and preachers to fix their kids. It's a broken system.
Example, a guy from church was invited to the college Christian group on campus. We made him feel welcome, but he kept wanting to have someone his own exact age to talk to at our dinner and game socials. I told him to invite them. Most of us were no older than two years more than this 19-20 yo college student. He was in the gt mold and very narrow minded as he was trained to be all his life. Just one example of why I encourage teens to be patient, but not be dumb when someone is inappropriate.